Tax the varlets

At the risk of going all Compassy I thought it was worth flagging up the campaign around the proposed Robin Hood Tax. Bill Nighy’s main job is to lend a bit of class to dodgy English films. In the video below he turns in a great performance as a mendacious banker and thanks to Jodley,…

Liam

February 13, 2010

1–2 minutes

At the risk of going all Compassy I thought it was worth flagging up the campaign around the proposed Robin Hood Tax.

Bill Nighy’s main job is to lend a bit of class to dodgy English films. In the video below he turns in a great performance as a mendacious banker and thanks to Jodley, one of this site’s most consistently evil visitors, for making me aware of it.

It’s an Anglicisation of the Tobin tax presumably because the instigators thought that a semi mythical historical figure who has featured in lots of great films would resonate a bit better in the public imagination that a Nobel Laureate economist. They might be right.

The idea is beguiling. Levy a 0.05% tax on all speculative financial transactions and you raise US$400bn to spend on social provision. According to the campaign’s website the financial sector “now turns over more than 60 times the size of world GDP every year. In the UK it has reached a staggering 446 times the size of our real economy.” It also observes that “An unprecedented bailout of the UK banking sector has left a gaping hole that threatens government commitments to end fuel poverty, child poverty, safeguard jobs, the protection of natural systems which support adaptation in the south (flood defences, forest protection etc), investing in schools and the NHS, and dealing effectively with climate change and poverty around the globe.”

This is the first meaningful attempt to harness the exploitative financial sector’s turnover and it has a real chance of building a successful coalition. Naturally the rudimentary demands about nationalising the banking sector and cancelling the debt have a place in the propaganda of any radical organisation worth its salt. However my hunch is that these will have something of an abstract quality for, oh at least the next three or four months. By contrast this incredibly modest bit of expropriation will be incredibly popular and offers the space to argue for stronger measures. It’s worth supporting.

3 responses to “Tax the varlets”

Jodley

February 13, 2010 at 1:34 pm

Hey, what’s with the consistently evil?

Despite my nearest and dearest regularly telling me it it is just the Tobin tax, he’s wrong (and you’re wrong too). The Tobin taxwas designed to slow currency markets, whereas this is on all transactions (other than retail) and a much smaller % (since any slowing of the market caused would be a byproduct, not a primary intention).

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Raphie

February 13, 2010 at 7:49 pm

I think the tax has a lot of problems at a lot of levels. First it needs international agreement – most of these transactions are also off market – on an unofficial over the counter (OTC) market which are currently un supervised.

Far from curtailing banks from speculation it would push banks from a lowe margin execution buisness for penison and insurance funds where the margins are thin ( we would end paying through increased fees on running our oenuiosn/insurabce funds) to trading for the Bank’s own account (speculative proprietary trading with high returns).

Brown and co know all this and that it will never be implemented. He is using it as a bit of Bank bashing ahead of the election.

The real way would be to tax the bansk investmnnet baning profits and hit the high earners with a 100% tax above £100,000.

Of course realling taking over the banks and using their ten of thousands of assets for social use and closing down all their speculative buisnesses and tunring theie lending into social rents is the real way ahead.

The Robin Tax campaign is becoming a substitute for real action and something Brown and co can hide behind.

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shug

February 13, 2010 at 11:23 pm

Was not the Tobin tax proposal designed to shift short term corporate profits, derived from unproductive speculative money go rounds back towards investing in the productive sector.

$1.5 trillion is traded daily on the currency market,it is proposed that a modest 0.05 to 0.25% tax could raise $90 to $300 billion annually depending on transactions, and of course international political will and co-operation.

Brown has said a while back that he was in favour of such a tax,yet the governor of the Bank of England has said that such a proposal “is the bottom of the list”.Further is it domed before getting out of the starting box,as Bono (the planet twat)and tax avoider is in favour of it.

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